Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 9/9/2010: PlayStation 3 Shuts Again





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Airbus Joins Open Source Think Tank Paris
    Olliance Group and DLA Piper are proud to announce that Airbus, a European consortium producing the Airbus family of passenger aircraft will present a business case with the support of the Eclipse Foundation at the Think Tank Sept 28 & 29. Among the topics to be addressed are; long-term community support models, shared innovation between industry, vendors and the community, and open source in supply chain management. With more than five years of strategic use of open source, Airbus will present sophisticated questions for the Think Tank audience to deliberate.


  • Events

    • A Tentative Schedule For XDS 2010
      For those interested in the X Developers' Summit (XDS) that is taking place next week at a tobacco factory in France, a tentative schedule has now been published by Matthieu Herrb for the 50 or so people that will be participating in the summit.




  • Oracle



  • CMS

    • Drupal featured on TV quiz
      According to Jo Wouters, Drupal was just featured on "De Canvascrack", a quiz on Belgian television. I know it is a quiz, but I don't think Drupal has ever been featured on television in such a mainstream way. Cool!




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Government

    • UK.gov finally pulls plug on National Programme for IT
      The ailing National Programme for IT has been cancelled, although most of its multi-billion pound spending will go ahead.

      A statement from the Department of Health said a shift to more local procurement would work better, "whilst continuing with national applications already procured".


    • Barroso’s State of the Union
      The Europe Union institutions copy more elements from the United States than I believe suit the dignity of the European Union. Even the “e pluribus unum“, you may also find that on the US seal, though the current US motto is “In God we trust”, ironically the EU started a competition to come up with a translation of the Latin phrase in its 27 member languages, and even reverse-translated it to Latin, in an odd fashion “In varietate concordia”.




  • Licensing

    • Linux Foundation Simplifies FOSS License Management
      The Linux Foundation used this year’s LinuxCon in Boston to launch its new Open Compliance Program, aimed at making it easier for companies that are new to using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to ensure that their products comply with open source licensing.






Leftovers

  • Ikea to sell second-hand furniture online


  • Science

    • Mars organics get new lease on life
      Martian soil could contain the building blocks of carbon-based life after all, a new study suggests, despite the negative results of an analysis performed by the Viking missions 34 years ago.

      When the Viking landers touched down on Mars in 1976 and scooped up soil samples, scientists were surprised that the two craft failed to unearth evidence that the Red Planet contained any organic compounds. The apparent lack of organic molecules — a basic requirement for carbon-based organisms — helped to cement the notion of Mars as an entity that would not easily support life.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss
      Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming debate, should be halved, according to Dutch and US scientists.


    • Land of Gas
      At issue now, however, are the steep decline rates observed from shale natural gas wells. Don’t these decline curves imply, axiomatically, that the new miracle of shale natural gas production is doomed?






  • Finance

    • Italian school lunches go organic, low-cost, local
      Rome school district with its 150,000 children, and a cafeteria budget of 140 million euros (or $180.5 million), has already pushed the boundary of healthy food to even greater heights.

      If there is one city that has done the most to shape the Ministry’s guidelines, it is Rome. The city served its first organic menu in late 2007.




  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Breaking News on EFF Location Privacy Win: Courts May Require Search Warrants for Cell Phone Location Records
      This morning, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia issued its highly anticipated ruling in a hotly contested cell phone location privacy case. EFF filed a friend-of-the-court brief and participated at oral argument in the case, arguing that federal electronic privacy law gives judges the discretion to deny government requests for cell phone location data when the government fails to show probable cause that a crime has been committed.


    • Online Ads, Privacy Remain in FTC Crosshairs
      A senior official at the Federal Trade Commission hinted on Wednesday that the agency is planning to prod online advertisers and Web companies to adopt new education tools and data-collection restrictions in an effort to protect consumer privacy.

      "Right now the consumers really don't understand what's going on. So I think that is the real issue that needs to be addressed," Loretta Garrison, a senior attorney at the FTC, said here at the O'Reilly Media Gov 2.0 Summit. "We think they sort of know they're being tracked, but they don't really understand the wealth of information that's being collected and the many different parties that are involved and the various ways in which [information] is being used."




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights

      • Film industry hires cyber hitmen to take down internet pirates
        The film industry is using pirate tactics to beat the pirates – by employing “cyber hitmen” to launch attacks that take out websites hosting illegal movies.


      • How an Anti-Piracy Firm Became Banned In Its Own Country
        A notorious Switzerland-based anti-piracy tracking company has to stop harvesting the IP addresses of citizens using P2P networks. The Swiss High Court ruled that IP addresses constitute personal information and when Logistep collected them without the owner’s knowledge, that amounted to a breach of privacy laws. From its eDonkey Razorback beginnings, via France through to yesterday’s conclusion, here is the full story.










Clip of the Day



The First Official Interactive Unboxing Of The Nokia N8 -- Call Quality



[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Credit: TinyOgg

Recent Techrights' Posts

SLAPP Censorship - Part 86 Out of 200: The Position of Courts on Computer-Generated Lawsuits and Filings From Another Continent (Made by Two Men Who Work for Slop Companies)
Lawsuits by proxy from California
IAM Magazine is in Effect Dead, It's Now Fused Into Microsoft's Patent Troll (Which It Has Promoted All Along)
Microsoft-connected patent trolls in Europe [...] Now, in his new job, Wild can use his 'expertise' to help guide blackmail/extortion to better harm Europe's industry
 
Gemini Links 24/05/2026: Impressions of Auckland, the Age of Left or Right Extremism, and .zim files
Links for the day
Microsoft's 'Hiring Freeze' (Layoffs) and Salary Freeze (While Inflation Approaches Double-Digit Rates)
If they get replaced by anyone, it'll be low-paid folks in low-salary regions [...] workers' stress levels shoot up, compensation goes down
Slop Will Not End Humanity, The Pushers of It Do (Artificial Scarcities and Global Warming)
Causing hunger and poverty in the name of "computation"
How Can the 'Broligarchs' Love Us When They Don't Even Love Themselves?
Their SLAPPs have their limits
Death at IBM Due to Overwork
Dying for IBM is never worth it
We Publish Less, We Get More Exposure
UbuntuPit is coming to realise that quantity isn't what comes to matter or truly "count", especially when quantity comes at expense of authenticity
Codecs and Software Patents - Part IX - GNU Project Has Chosen to Adopt AV1 for Its Videos, Conversion and Additions Underway
One of our readers is working to help GNU through the maze of software patents and maze of patent lawsuits, which aren't the same thing but are somewhat overlapping issues
Links 24/05/2026: SoftBank CEO Getting Conned by Scam Altman, Hotter 2026 and El Nino With Growing Impact
Links for the day
Links 24/05/2026: Ebola Outbreak and "Journalists Identify Murder Victims Of Trump’s Boat Strike Program"
Links for the day
A Huge Proportion of 'Articles' in The Register MS Are Actually Paid Spam of the Communist Party of China, Selling Compromised (for Wiretapping) Technology
The Register MS is having a go at becoming a marketing company or "B2B"
Top Officials Have Just Left Microsoft, Layoffs in Anything But Name
Microsoft's debt is very fast-growing
Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) Meets "Alicante Mafia" at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Report on meeting with VP1 and his team on 21 April 2026
UbuntuPit (ubuntupit.com) Has Deleted Slop Pages, Its Slopfarm Experiment Has Failed (Like Always!)
Turning one's site into a slopfarm is a death knell
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 23, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, May 23, 2026
The "Next Big" Bonus for IBM's CEO Apparently Comes From American Taxpayers While Veteran IBMers Are PIP'd and RA'd (Laid Off)
the next big thing will be the CEO's bonus
Links 23/05/2026: Starbucks Scraps Disastrous Slopfest, Colbert’s Final ‘Late Show’
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/05/2026: Poetry, Hobbies, ROOPHLOCH, and More
Links for the day
Government Bailouts Won't be Enough to Save IBM
Bailouts from taxpayers in the US
Links 23/05/2026: Social Media Bans and Demise of Userbase of LLM Chatbots
Links for the day
Legal Letters Are Not Postcards
It seems like intimidation, nothing more
SLAPP Censorship - Part 85 Out of 200: The United Kingdom's Rating for Press Freedom Has Improved, But We Can Do Even Better
we see the US at #64
Sites Realise That Becoming More Active by Using Bots (LLM Slop) is Self-Destructive
We'll soon (maybe next year) also show that some of the 85+ KG of legal papers sent our way are computer-generated garbage, which might run afoul of some rules
European Patent Office (EPO) Strikes Persist, EPO Management Tries to Give False Impression of "Happy Staff"
EPO is trying to broadcast to the world a totally phony image of itself
Gemini Links 23/05/2026: Patience, LLM Chatbts Being Bad, and Unexpected Computer Surgery
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 22, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, May 22, 2026
Links 22/05/2026: Ebola Crisis and Samsung Averts a Walkout With Big Bonuses
Links for the day
The End of FOSSPost (fosspost.org), It Has become an LLM Slopfarm Like FOSSLinux
These sites will never get lucky with slop. These experiments always end badly.
Links 22/05/2026: Inflation Fears and Thailand Tightens Visa Rules for Tourists From Dozens of Nations
Links for the day
EPO Staff Representation Speaks of This Week's Discussion With the EPO's Budget and Finance Committee (BFC) Amid Mass Strikes
The Central Staff Committee's outline (prepared in a rush) or the "flash report"
SLAPP Censorship - Part 84 Out of 200: New Legislation Against SLAPPs on the Way (After We Reached Out to Ministers)
They dealt with the matter individually too, but we won't share this in public, at least not at this time
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XXX - Where Was "The Ethics and Compliance Team" When the Family of EPO President Campinos Was Caught Doing Cocaine?
It remains to be seen if national delegates will tolerate this in future meetings
Gemini Links 22/05/2026: Esperanto Music History, Suspicious Adoption of Signal, and Unauthorised LLM Slop in Code
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 21, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, May 21, 2026